Timelike boundaries in gravity

10 am – 5 pm, 21 Oct 2022

The London Institution hosts a one-day workshop exploring the role of timelike boundaries in the context of gravity, followed by drinks.

The equations governing scalar field theory and electromagnetism are well posed. When it comes to gravity, by contrast, there are aspects that remain unresolved—in particular, the role of timelike boundaries. Yet that investigation goes to the heart of general relativity and is playing an increasingly important part in studies of, for instance, the TTbar deformation in the AdS/CFT correspondence, and aspects of holography in de Sitter spacetimes. Numerical studies point towards the existence of instabilities, and recently, rigorous theorems have been proven regarding the nature of the initial boundary value problem in gravity with timelike boundaries.

The aim of this workshop it to bring together experts on mathematical, numerical, and holographic aspects of timelike boundaries in gravity, with the aim of connecting the mathematical and physics literature and in the process creating a common language for future research.

The event is hosted by the London Institute for Mathematical Sciences, which is based at the Royal Institution. It will take place in the Faraday Room on the second floor.

Programme

10:00 - 11:15 Ted Jacobson (U. of Maryland)
11:15 - 11:45 Coffee Break
11:45 - 13:00 Jacques Smulevici (Sorbonne U.)
13:00 - 14:30 Lunch Break
14:30 - 15:15 Vasudev Shyam (Stanford U.)
15:15 - 15:30 Short Break
15:30 - 17:00 Discussion session led by Eleanor Harris (KCL) and Andrew Svesko (UCL)
17:00 Drinks at the London Institute

Speakers

Prof Ted Jacobson is a Distinguished University Professor at University of Maryland. He also holds a Distinguished Visiting Research Chair at Perimeter Institute. His research concerns innovative work on black hole thermodynamics, the nature of spacetime, and quantum gravity.

Dr Damian Galante is the Stephen Hawking Fellow at KCL. His research interests concern the emergent nature of spacetime in the context of holography. He graduated from Perimeter Institute and held a position in Amsterdam before moving to King’s. He was awarded the bronze prize at STEM for Britain 2020.

Prof. Yang-Hui He is a Fellow at the London Institute, Professor at City University, Chang-Jiang Chair at NanKai University and Lecturer at Merton College, Oxford. He studied at Princeton, Cambridge and MIT and researches string theory, algebraic geometry and machine learning.

Dr Dionysios Anninos is a lecturer in Theoretical Physics at KCL and a Royal Society Research Fellow. His research lies at the interface of cosmology, black holes, and holography. He graduated from Harvard, and held positions at Stanford, IAS and Amsterdam before moving to KCL.

Jacques Smulevici is a Professor of Mathematics at Laboratoire Jacques-Louis Lions in the Sorbonne University in Paris. Most of his work is focused on the analysis of geometric hyperbolic partial differential equations, in particular related to the Cauchy problem for the Einstein equations.

Dr Andrew Svesko is a Simons Foundation research fellow at UCL. He has previously studied with Oregon State and Arizona State. His research concerns quantum gravity, horizon thermodynamics and the interface of information theory and holography.

Eleanor Harris is a postgraduate research student at KCL. She joined KCL after completing Part III of the Mathematical Tripos in Cambridge. She works under supervision of Dr. Dionysios Anninos and her work concerns quantum features of de Sitter spacetime.

Dr Vasu Shyam is a postdoctoral researcher at Stanford and holds a Branco Weiss Fellowship. He previously studied at the Perimeter Institute and University of Waterloo. His research concerns extending models of holography and gravitational physics in our observable universe.